


In A Dark Time

by koanju (verstehen)



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verstehen/pseuds/koanju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A confrontation, while the angel seeks help to stop the devil. Spoilers through S3, AU after An Invisible Thread</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Dark Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liam22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liam22/gifts).



> Thanks to Redhillbones for looking this over and inspiration. Title from the [Theodore Roethke poem In A Dark Time](http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/231.html). Written for the Sylar/Claire ficathon.

He didn't need his secretary to know when she'd entered the building. The Other seemed to know, almost instinctively, like she had a smell or an aura or _something_ that made him rumble and begin to wake up. Those grumblings scared him more than his upcoming meeting, which was frightening enough all on its own.

He paced around the room once, trying to force himself into some semblance of a calm. Then he took a long, deep breath and moved to sit down at the desk, the firm leather creaking loudly as he settled. The sound blasted through the room and he wondered if they could even hear it in the outer office.

"Sir? Miss Bennet?" his secretary's voice prompted a second time through the intercom.

He took another long, shaky breath and pressed the talk button on his phone. "Yes, James, send her in please. And clear the afternoon. I'll be busy," he said, sounding much calmer than he felt. He knew, though, that he _needed_ to feel calm. The more nervous and scared he got… the more awake The Other would get.

No one wanted that.

"You have a meeting with Senator Dillings at 2 and with Representative Collingsworth at 3," James warned him.

"I know; cancel them anyway." He heard the tone of voice as he was speaking flatten out into an order. It felt strange to give orders. The Other gave orders; he didn't.

Gabriel Grey had never been the sort of man to give orders nor had he ever really needed to. That was what The Other had been there to do.

"Do you want me to reschedule?" James pushed and Gabriel resisted the urge to scream through the phone.

"No, James. It's not important right now. Send Miss Bennet in."

"Yes, sir," James said and he heard confusion in the younger man's voice as the phone clicked, signaling the end of the call.

The door to his office opened and --

_As pretty as a picture; as beautiful as always; she looks best angry and resolute. I want to play with her._

The first thing he noticed about her was that she'd cut and straightened her hair. The long, curly, thick locks The Other had touched were gone. Her blonde hair framed her face, curling around her chin and shoulders almost like a fluffy halo. And she was smiling, sweet and sure, her white teeth contrasting with the tanned skin of her face. Claire Bennet was smiling at him.

"Nathan!" She crossed the room quickly and stopped right in front of him, her arms halfway lifted before dropping, as if she was going to give him a hug and changed her mind. Claire was wearing cutoff shorts, blue jean threads sliding along her leg and a tight green t-shirt that seemed like it was painted on to her curves that matched her eyes. _Gorgeous._

He stepped back from her, trying to put some space, and moved over to the door to open it. James, his -- or, rather, _Nathan's_ very able assistant -- was sitting at his desk working. "James," he told the young man. "Have you cleared my schedule for the rest of the day?"

James nodded at him seriously. "Yes, sir. Do you need something else?"

Gabriel gave the man a faint smile. He wondered how it looked on Nathan's face. "You can take the rest of the day off, James. That's what I'm planning to do."

"Yes, Senator Petrelli. Let me just finish up this email and I'll go," he said.

"Don't take too long," Gabriel warned. It was likely to get loud, soon, and he didn't want any witnesses. He stepped inside the room but didn't shut the door completely. He wanted to hear when James left the office. Then he could shut the door and he and Claire could really get down to business. Even now, he could hear the shuffling of papers being put away and the whirring sounds of electronics shutting down.

"Do you want something to drink? Water?" he offered, remembering his lessons from his mother -- aunt, or not, Virginia Gray was the woman he remembered as his mother and --

Gabriel didn't want to think about what he'd done to her. That hadn't been The Other. That was his _third_ crime. He didn't deserve to live; Gabriel knew he was going to hell for his sins.

"No, I'm fine," Claire said, still smiling at him. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Rather than answering, he checked the front office. Empty; good, James had left. Gabriel shut the door and turned to Claire. "I have something to show you, Claire. It's… difficult and I just want to say how sorry I am before I do."

Claire relaxed posture disappeared. He watched her shoulders tense and her expression change to something more like dread before it blanked out. "And here I thought you might want to show me around D.C. now that I'm coming to Virginia for school," she said and her voice was as blank as her face but -- Gabriel, or maybe The Other, could read the real resentment simmering underneath.

"I wish that were possible," Gabriel told her quietly and moved further away from her, but made sure to still block the door. They had to have this conversation and they couldn't have it if she tried to run. "But, unfortunately, I don't actually know D.C. that well."

And then Gabriel let his hold on Nathan's form drop.

"_SYLAR!_" Claire hissed, her eyes going wide. She moved for the desk, probably to get some sort of weapon. A letter opener. He supposed that would hurt well enough.

"I'm not Sylar. Please, believe me. I'm not Sylar. Sylar's had me trapped for, for years now. I'm so, so sorry about what he did for you and why he did it. No one deserves that and to hurt you like that as revenge for your father's cruelty. It was wrong. Evil."

He could see the wheels turning in her head and had a feeling he knew what was coming next. "You can't -- They lied! Again! How did you survive? I saw them burn the body! Is Nathan alive? Where is he?"

Gabriel swallowed hard, wishing that he didn't have all the explanations this time. "Please, sit. I'll sit far over here, on the desk chair, so that you can take the couch."

The furious expression on her face increased as Claire's mouth dropped open in outrage. She brandished the letter opener she'd snatched from the desk in front of her to threaten him. Sylar would have just used his telekinesis to pin her to the wall and then take the opener. Gabriel wasn't The Other though.

"Tell me!" she demanded, stepping to the side. With a burst of knowledge that must have come from Sylar's experience, he realized she was trying to flank him. Claire wanted to get around to his back so she could stab him again.

He edged toward the corner of the room, backing into it so that he had cover on his back and most of both sides. "Okay, you don't want to sit. My name -- My name is Gabriel. I -- Are you talking about Primatech? How he survived it."

"The glass melted," she said contemptuously. She lifted her right hand briefly and took another step. "This won't melt. Who did they burn?"

"A shape shifter that turned into my shape to try to trick Danko. Danko shot him and Sylar took his ability," he told her matter-of-factly, pressing his hand on either side of him against a pale, blue walls.

"Where's Nathan?" she demanded next and Gabriel tried to ignore the way her voice waivered as if she suspected the truth. "Where is he, Sylar?"

"I don't know what his mother and your father did with the body, I'm sorry. I'd tell you if I knew." He frowned at her, an familiar anger building inside of him. "My name is Gabriel Gray. I am not Sylar."

"You killed him." The words came out in a whisper but Claire never took her eyes off him, giving Gabriel a full show of the way her face blanked out, all expression leeched out leaving only wet eyes and white cheeks. "You killed him, Sylar."

"Sylar killed him. Sylar slit his throat. I didn't do that. You have to believe me. I don't know how much time I have."

"I don't believe you," she said flatly and even the emotion was gone from her voice. He had a flash of Sylar's memory of Claire's face as she stabbed him; it had been wholly implacable, wholly determined. He knew Sylar had been... dead... at the time, so it had to come from one of his abilities. Sylar had touched the remains of the melted glass after he'd woken up in the ashes of Primatech. "Sylar's a good liar." Even though she said she didn't believe him... Gabriel noted the way she'd said 'Sylar' and not 'you.' It gave him hope.

"What could I do to convince you?" he asked, immediately.

Her lips tightened and she spat out, "Die." But Claire took a deep breath and started moving deliberately toward his back. "Turn your back to me. Give me a clear shot."

Gabriel did as she asked, turning around and showing his back. "Claire, Sylar moved the spot," he told her quietly. "If you stab me in the back of my neck, I'm not going to die."

He felt the cold metal of the letter opener against the back of his neck, right where Claire herself was vulnerable. "Only one way to test that." But the blade didn't slide in. "Where is it? The spot?"

He hesitated briefly and reached down to pull up the left leg of Nathan's suit pants, the fabric smooth against his palm. "Do you know the story of Achilles?" he asked her, toeing off his left shoe with his right foot.

The anger and blankness flickered, leaving her questioning him with her eyes. "Yeah. Yes. I think so. We went over this in world history. He was a guy who fought in the Trojan war, right? He was invincible, killed whole battlefields, and then he got shot in the heel and it took him out."

"Achilles's mother, Thetis, wanted to protect him after he'd been born. So she dipped him in the river Styx, to try and make him immortal. All of him was dunked, protecting him, except for the part that Thetis was holding on to: his heel." He balanced on his right leg and bent his knee to push his left foot back toward Claire. "That's where the spot is, Claire. My Achilles tendon."

"That's where's you put it?"

He shook his head. "That's where Sylar put it. He likes mythology. I'm not sure I understand it." He reached down and stripped off the sock on his left foot. Then he braced himself and put that foot on the coffee table.

He felt the blade against his neck push in and the slow drip of blood from the cut slide down his neck and Gabriel held his breath, expecting the pain of the blow.

But it never came. The blade disappeared against his neck and he felt, more than heard, Claire retreat. "Tell me. Who are you? What do you want?" Her voice cracked and, when he looked over at her, she had dropped heavily down onto the couch and buried her head in her hands.

He swallowed and tugged his sleeve over his hand with his fingers so that he could wipe the blood away. Nathan wouldn't need five hundred dollar shirts any longer. "If it would make you feel better, you can test I'm telling the truth."

"By killing you?" Her voice was muffled as she sat there, slumped over. "Just -- what do you want? You called me here for a reason, Sy -- Gabriel."

"It'd only be temporary. You're a good person. You'd pull the blade out," he answered her slowly. Not with any hesitation but slowly as he gathered his thoughts. "I needed to talk to you, person to person. Human being to human being."

She laughed softly, bitterly. "I'm not entirely sure Sylar's a person, let alone a human being. So talk." She straightened and met his eyes, rage and despair easy to see in her gaze, though her face was dry and blank.

Claire always had been controlled, he remembered that. "But I am not Sylar," he answered, raising an eyebrow. "He might wear my face and ride my body but he is not me and I am not him. I think I need to start at the beginning, Claire, but it's going to be a long story. Are you willing to listen?"

"Get out of his clothes," she said suddenly and pointed to the suit. "I don't want to see you wearing... Nathan like he was a suit. Wearing his suits. Change. And then I'll listen."

He looked down at what he was wearing. "I don't have anything else to wear. I could strip naked but I think that'd discomfort us both. Would finding more casual clothes of his be okay?"

Claire licked her lips and then nodded. "It'll have to do." Gabriel supposed she'd never really seen Nathan out of his suits before.

He stood and nodded, trusting that she wouldn't call the cavalry in. She believed he was telling the truth. But a promise wouldn't hurt. "Please, promise me that when I leave you won't call anyone to come get or hurt me, nor leave yourself. Do you promise?"

He wasn't expecting the bitter smile she gave him. "Who would come?" Claire asked. "Everyone thinks you're dead and --" Now she looked away. "And it's obvious some people were behind hiding you. You -- Sylar -- didn't do this on his own without no one knowing."

"They think I'm Nathan. Sylar collected enough of his memories that I could put on his face and place enough to finish the night." Impulsively, he added, "I threw up afterward. I understand grief but trying to bring the dead back that way." He swallowed and it nearly caught in his throat. "I'm going to go change now."

He left without looking back at her expression and found Nathan's bedroom, searching for more casual clothes. Even the casual clothes were tailored designer jeans and crisp t-shirts, but he found a dark blue under shirt with the underwear and socks. That's what he put on: the undershirt and a pair of jeans. He left his feet bare and went back out to the living room. When he came back into the office, Claire had moved to Nathan's desk and was rifling through the drawers. He wasn't sure what she was looking for but he hoped she found it. She looked up at his clothes and nodded. "Better. I have one more question before you start. You say you're Gabriel... does that mean Sylar isn't coming back?"

"No. That's what we need to talk about." He pulled the cushioned visitor's chair over toward one side of the desk and sat down. "I'll start from the beginning now. I was born to a man named Samson Gray and a woman, Ileana. I remember her a little, bits and pieces, but not as well as I remember my father. Samson Gray had the same ability that I do."

She stopped her searching and looked up to stare at him. "That's what you meant. In the Stanton, you --" She grimaced briefly. "Sylar told me his father was a disappointment. That's what he meant. He had the same ability."

"Yes. They talked for a bit about things, about why Samson sold us, and then Sylar cut himself accidentally while he was helping with Samson's hobby. Samson saw the cut and put three arrows into his chest to pin him long enough to take it. He was dying of cancer and our ability, the one taken from you, would have saved him."

"Sylar didn't tell him how to get it," she reasoned slowly before returning to the desk drawers. Finally, she pulled out a notepad and grabbed a pen from the desk. "I think I would have remembered being stalked by people other than Danko and Sylar."

"No, he didn't give you up. He freed himself and told Samson that the best revenge was knowing that Samson would die sick and alone with nothing." Gabriel leaned back in the chair, putting his arms on the rests for something to do. "Ileana was a masochist to his sadism. He'd hurt her, I remember the screams. But at some point it wasn't enough. He found other toys to play with. As for me, I was an experiment. He was sure that any child of his would be... superior."

She snorted. "And was daddy disappointed?" she asked, her voice dry as the desert.

"Yes." He tilted his head. "And no." He met her eyes across the room from where she perched on the corner of the desk, pad and pen ready. "That's why I had to start at the beginning. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't stop him. I was terrified, not for the first time, and then this calm came over me. A voice told me it'd be okay..." He drifted off for a minute then shook his head to clear it. "I blacked out and when I woke up Samson had a concussion, three broken ribs, and a fractured femur."

She scratched something on the pad but the movements didn't seem like real writing. "When was this? When Sylar met up with Samson again?"

Gabriel shook his head. "No. When I was three or four. I was little; I don't know how old."

"You --" She stopped and he answered the question she wasn't asking.

"That's the first time I felt Sylar. Where I couldn't fight, he protected me. He protected my mother too, which is why Samson decided to sell us."

"So you --" She pursed her lips and studied him briefly before continuing. Her left hand reached up to push curvy stands of hair out of her face and Gabriel had the sudden impulse to do it himself, touch her hair like it was precious gold. "You're saying you have a split personality. Sylar's a split personality."

"Yes. He researched it recently. It's now called Dissociative Identity Disorder." He swallowed, trying to stay calm. "After we went to live with Virginia things were better. They weren't perfect but who gets perfect, right? The blackouts only happened a few times, always when my safety was at risk." He stared at her face and tried to pretend he wasn't watching her lick her lips as she concentrated. It was harder than he expected it to be. "I grew up and they stopped entirely. Until..."

"Until Sylar came out and started killing people," she said flatly. "What was he protecting you from then? Your own greed?" She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, tilting her head back and exposing her neck. The urge to touch, to take, to lick... that had to be Sylar's. Gabriel wouldn't ever touch Claire, not after everything Sylar had done to her. He wouldn't.

"It wasn't like that!" He took a harsh breath in and straightened in the chair. "Chandra, Chandra Suresh came to me, said I had a unique gift. He ran tests and in the end he found that there was clearly something there but he didn't know what. He needed to move on to a better Patient Zero.

"He had this list. One of them was in New York. I called him. I just wanted to know if he knew how to turn it on, how to make my ability work. That's all I wanted to know," his voice caught and he was breathing heavier than he should be. He should reason with her but he couldn't. "Then the man, the man told me he just wanted it to go away, for me to take it away. And I trusted the voice in my head, the one that had protected for so long, when he said, 'Do it. Pick up that quartz and do it.'

"As soon as it was over I felt sick, guilty, beyond redemption. I organized my affairs and I tied the noose to hang myself before I could hurt anyone else."

"So it was Sylar's greed," she said softly. "He pushed you to kill the first time and then you wanted to hang yourself." She made another few scribbles on her notepad. "Obviously you didn't die. Did Sylar stop you?"

"No, Elle did, working with your father," he said grimly and Claire's expression turned furious. "That doesn't matter," he hurried to say. "Claire, I need your help. When Angela forced Sylar into Nathan's form, it woke me up. But he's still in there, and I can feel him stirring. He'll _come back._"

"Then let me kill you. That will solve the problem entirely."

Gabriel flinched at how cold she sounded, and again at the voice in his brain saying, _You helped do that to her._ "I -- I don't think that would fix the problems we have left, not all of them. But --" He stopped, his mouth closing against his will before he could offer to let her. Sylar was waking up again. He had to finish this quickly, before Gabriel was put to sleep again. "Please, Claire, will you help me? I don't know what to do now." Even as he said it, he could feel the confusion and fear swirling in his gut. Sylar lived on Gabriel's confusion and fear.

And rage.

"And you thought I'd be the best person to help _you_?" Claire asked skeptically.

"Angela, your father, and Matt Parkman are who woke me up," Gabriel tried to explain. "I can't go to any of them. I'm afraid if I tried Pete --" He grimaced as a little bit of Nathan inside slipped out. "He wouldn't be able to see past the loss of his brother."

"And I'd forget you killed my father and my mother!" Claire slammed her notebook closed, her expression fierce as she glared at him. Gabriel knew he'd lost her -- she was referring to Sylar's actions as his again. Mentioning Nathan's death again had been a misstep. Claire shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "Exactly what help do you want, if you don't want me to kill you?"

"I don't know," he said as honestly as possible. "I just know I can't do this alone."

Claire nodded slowly. "I understand that." She stood up, tearing the piece of paper she had been writing off the pad and walking to the desk. "I'll help you, Gabriel, but the minute Sylar comes back -- I'll kill him."

Gabriel smiled, feeling more relieved than he had in weeks since he'd woke up. "Thank you, Claire, thank you." He put every ounce of gratitude he could muster into his voice and gestured back to the couch. "Maybe -- maybe we could talk some more? Figure things out?"

"We'll start with my dad and Angela," she said, brushing her hair back out of her face and sitting down.

"That's a good idea," Gabriel agreed, smiling.

Somewhere, inside him, though, a voice was thinking _Let's play, Claire_, but too quietly for Gabriel to hear.

END (for now)


End file.
